1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an antibody to the BAMBI protein, to a manufacturing method for the antibody, and to a diagnostic agent or therapeutic agent for colon cancer and liver cancer containing the antibody.
2. Description of the Related Art
CEA, CA19-9 and other tumor markers are considered to be effective in the diagnosis of colon cancer. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2000-323499 discloses a tumor marker assay method for detecting tumor markers in blood components. However, these tumor markers are not very reliable because they do not always occur in association with cancer, and abnormal values may be due to causes other than cancer.
It has also been shown that APC, RAS, p53 and other genes are associated with the development of colon cancer. However, no genetic diagnosis method that specifically detects colon cancer has yet been established for practical use.
In the area of chemotherapy for the treatment of colon cancer, alkylating agents, antimetabolites and the like have been studied which are cytotoxic to cancer cells by blocking cancer gene transcription, cleaving DNA or the like, but these drugs have side-effects because they do not act selectively only on cancer cells but also affect normal cells.
Colon cancers are one of the most common kinds of tumors, and in recent years the number of patients has increased in Japan and is expected to increase still further. Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a diagnostic agent and therapeutic agent capable of reliably diagnosing and treating colon cancer.